


Dying in L.A.

by Bugggghead



Series: Bughead Drabbles & One Shots [29]
Category: Archie Comics, Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Song fic, Vignettes, betty's been in an accident, flangst according to kari, inspired by panic at the disco, jughead can't get there fast enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 23:19:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16753375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugggghead/pseuds/Bugggghead
Summary: Every face along the boulevard is a dreamer just like youYou looked at death in a tarot card and you saw what you had to do-inspired by Panic! At The Disco - Dying in LA





	Dying in L.A.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katieeeeexx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katieeeeexx/gifts).



> To @betty-cooper HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope I did your prompt justice. You deserve all the best things in the world today and every single day of your life. I am so beyond proud of the person you have become and how you continue to grow. You are my forever fave and my fandom experience truly would be different without you and your presence. I love youuuuuu!
> 
> Thanks to @jandjsalmon for lending me your eyes & thoughts on this little work. Thanks as well to @thenurseholliday because how on earth could I possibly write something inspired by Panic! At the Disco and not credit you for inspiration. Your ability to so eloquently form your thoughts and fantasies into these amazingly well-crafted stories will forever amaze me.

*

  
  


“She’s been in an accident.”

 

Sirens. The sounds of the sirens are sickening, turning his stomach as he waves his hand wildly through the thick evening air. 

 

“Mr. Jones, are you there?” A voice cuts through the fog.

 

“Yeah, yeah. I’m here. Where is she? Is she conscious?” A cab screeches to a stop and he can’t get in quick enough.

 

“We’re taking her to Cedars, and I’m afraid not. How soon can you get here?”

 

“Cedars,” he tosses up front, quickly returning his attention to the far too calm voice on the other end of the line. “Ten minutes. I’ll be there in ten.”

 

He’s met with silence after a short ‘okay’ and Jughead leans his head against the cool glass window, watching the city lights blur together through the veil of his unshed tears. 

 

-

 

_ The moment you arrived _ __   
_ They built you up _ __   
_ The sun was in your eyes _ _   
_ __ You couldn't believe it

 

-

 

He met her at the Chateau, her golden waves shining in the dim lights. She’d breathed confidence, shaking hands and nodding with a beaming smile he found himself entranced by. He simply watched, none the wiser to the newest ‘star’ his manager was courting save for the shape of her legs in the strappy black dress hugging her curves. He studied her, watching in those brief seconds between breaths when those surrounding her would look away. Her eyes would fall, her chest would rise, and that shimmering smile was nowhere to be found, recharging for the moments to come when all the eyes were fixed on her again.

 

A few hours later, still crammed in the corner of the nondescript booth he caught sight of the golden swing of her hair by the bar. She was alone, but far from lonely judging by the stares the men around were shooting her way. When a man got up, walked over and offered to buy her a drink, he found himself watching it all unfold. She leaned away, and he leaned in, she shook her head and his hand drifted to her hip. He couldn’t stand it anymore, swishing the remnants of his one and only drink in the glass before making his way to the bar.

 

“No. Thank you,” she said, her voice akin to a song, a melody he hadn’t expected to fit so well with the image before him.

 

“But, baby-”

 

“-She said no, man. Move on.” His own voice had a quality he wasn’t familiar with, a stern edge that meant there was no room for negotiation. 

 

The man in question caught on, raising his hands in defeat and muttering, ‘bitch,’ under his breath as he turned on his heel and left.

 

And when she lifted her head, a soft, “Thank you,” spilling from her lips, his breath caught in his throat. She wasn’t simply beautiful, or gorgeous, or any of the words he could pull in that very moment from the muddled mess of his mental thesaurus. 

 

She just  _ was. _ Her energy all-encompassing, the soft lilt to her lips captivating. She was there, and she was stunning, and she was talking to him, Jughead Jones, the published author who hid behind a pseudonym and blended into a crowd with ease. 

 

“It was nothing.” He shrugged, leaning against the bar next to her and taking note of the way she didn’t shy away. Instead, she angled her body toward him, a stark contrast to her earlier behavior. “I take it you’re new here?”

 

The slight flush creeping up her neck and staining her cheeks was not lost on him. “I am,” she said simply, the curve of her lips inspiring a smile on his own.

 

-

 

_ Nights at the chateau _ _   
_ _ Trapped in your sunset bungalow _

 

-

  
  


“We’re almost there.” The cab driver’s voice brings him back to the present, back to the sickening reality he isn’t in any way ready for. 

 

Jughead starts rifling through his wallet, gathering up a few twenties and shoving them into the front seat before hopping out of the back as soon as the cab stops. He tosses a quick, “Thank you,” back behind his shoulder as he bounds up the steps of the hospital. 

 

Once inside, he’s hit with it all at once - the stale stench of sterility and the tears adorning every cheek he sees. He pushes his way to the front and barely hears himself say, “Cooper.”

 

The look he’s given in return has his heart sinking into his stomach.

 

“Right this way Mr…” 

 

It isn’t until he meets the nurse’s gaze that he realizes she’s speaking to him. “Jones. Mr. Jones. The EMT called me when she arrived.”

 

“Are you family?”

 

_ No,  _ he almost says, but he knows how far that will get him and he isn’t about to be regulated to sitting in the hard, plastic chairs among the faceless masses in the waiting room. Instead, he says, “I’m all she has,” nodding his head as he speaks and hoping no further questions will be asked.

 

-

 

It had been a few months since the night they’d met. Months of conversations carrying on long past the hours when the sun had sunk below the skyline, months of nights spent wrapped in each other with increasing frequency and fervor. Months of sharing secrets, sealed with kisses he would never forget - could never forget. 

 

“You’re all I have,” she said somewhere around month four. “You’re all I need.”

 

“You’re Betty Cooper,” he had drawled, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her flush against him. “You don’t need anyone except yourself. You moved to LA and made it, you’re signed, you’re recording a record,  _ you _ , are all you need, baby.”

 

She had twisted her neck then, swinging her eyes up to his meet his and breathed a sentiment he’d never head before and now wasn’t sure he would ever hear again. “I may not need you in the physical sense, Juggie, but I don’t want to be without you ever again.”

 

He’d kissed her then, long, deep, drugging her with the sweep of his tongue and relishing in the feeling of her skin, soft beneath his fingertips. 

 

-

 

_ They told you put your blood on ice _ _   
_ _ You're not gonna make it _

 

-

 

The nurse pulls the curtain back, the limp body littered with tubes and the steady thrum of the machines collectively throwing him into a sense of surreality. 

 

_ No _ , he thinks,  _ no, no, no _ .

 

As he sinks to his knees beside her bed, staining the sheets with the tears he hasn’t even realized he’s shedding, he chants, “No, no, no, baby. Not like this. Not yet.” And then with a whine he doesn’t recognize as his own, he breathes, “I need you.”

 

The hours pass in seconds, brief glimpses of time punctuated by him having to move away over and over again. They check her vitals, change the bags hanging from the metal hooks, and whisper amongst themselves. He blocks it out the best he can, but some words work their way through his willful ignorance. 

 

“ _ She’s not going to make it.”  _

 

But she is, she needs to. In the most selfish of senses,  _ he _ needs her to. Never before has he needed anything or anyone in the way he feels he needs her now. It’s with a ferocity he hadn’t even known he possessed. 

 

He needs her there, in the morning, wrapped in his sheets, in his warmth. He needs her there to make the coffee just right, to pull out two cups and take her place next to him at the rickety table that is perpetually off-kilter no matter how many newspapers he shoves under the precarious legs. She belongs there, in his home, in his life, in his arms. 

 

And he’s trying his hardest not to entertain the idea that it may never happen again. 

 

-

 

“Let me buy you something,” she’d said with a smile, reaching across his kitchen table and laying her palm warm against his arm.

 

“You get one advance and all the sudden you want to spend it. I can’t, in good conscience, allow you to buy me anything, Betts.”

 

“Please, Jug, just a table.”

 

“Oh, no. No way. This was the first thing I bought when I moved to LA and it has to stay. No can do.”

 

“But, Juggie,” she’d whined, her brows raising slightly and that pleading look he’d become far too familiar with gracing her features. “If I move, my coffee spills and the table rocks. Don’t you want to save the coffee? Pretty pretty, pretttyyyyy pleaseeeeee.”

 

Despite the hopeful look, his own stubborn nature had taken over. “No way, no how. The table stays. Fill the cups a little less and we’ll cure the perpetual loss of coffee to the table.”

 

She’d conceded then, with a smile and small nod of her head, making her way into his lap and carding her fingers through his unkempt hair, still unruly from her tugs the night before. “Fine, but I’ve been staying here more often than my own place and my lease is-”

 

He’d cut her off with a kiss, melding their mouths together and tugging her impossibly closer. “Stay,” he’d breathed against her lips. “Stay with me, move in. Please.”

 

-

 

_ Every face along the boulevard is a dreamer just like you _ _   
_ _ You looked at death in a tarot card and you saw what you had to do _

 

-

  
  


He steps outside to get some air, his eyes skirting the outlines of buildings both large and small, tracing the sharp edges of concrete. She’d been in the hospital for nearly a week, still unconscious, still plagued with uncertainty. All but a few of his hours were spent by her side. One perk of being a writer was his relatively lax work schedule. Taking a week off to staple himself to her beside wouldn’t lose him his career, and at that moment, even if it would, he can’t bring himself to care about mundane things like work or bills or money. Nothing held more meaning than the steady rise and fall of her chest, the rhythmic beeping of the machines telling him she was still there. 

 

He looks around at the masses of faces, some smiling, laughing, walking along the streets as though they haven’t a care in the world. Others are shoved in their phones, their noses nearly bumping the shiny screens as their feet carry them wherever they’re going. Life goes on for them, the lucky few who don’t realize that just across the street his own is hanging in the balance. 

 

Her boxes aren't even fully unpacked, some still shoved in the hallway closet with the promise of another day whispered between kisses.

 

Six months. Six short months filled with her laughter, with her eyes lit up, shining with the same adoration he couldn’t possibly deny within himself. Six months isn’t a lifetime, and it isn’t nearly enough time. He still has so much to learn, so much to know about her. He knows how she takes her coffee, sure, and her adorable neuroses about kitchen cleaning habits and scheduled laundry days, knows some nights she’s kept awake scribbling lyrics in a moleskin notebook he’d lent her weeks before. 

 

But no matter how much, or truly how little he’s come to know about her, there’s still so much more to discover. 

 

-

 

He’d opened the fridge, a few weeks before, searching for something, anything to quell his screaming stomach when he’d noticed it. Tucked between the takeout containers were items he hadn’t purchased: organic apple juice, sugar-free french vanilla creamer, a bag of shredded cheese. They all seemed alike in their mundanity but it wasn’t what they were that’d had his breath caught in his throat. It was the strangely poetic sight of her likes, her things, tucked between his, fit into the cracks and crevices that were present in his own space. It was the effortless sight of her weaved into his life, his regular routine dotted with remnants of her, reminders of her presence in his day to day life. It was the idea of their worlds mixing with ease and how perfectly full the wire shelves looked stocked for them both.

 

A few days later he’d woken to the sweet serenade of one of the original songs she’d been working on seeping between the cracks spouting steam from his bathroom. The words leapt off the pages she’d shown him with excitment shining in her eyes. Like a siren song, caressing his senses and drawing him in, he followed the waves of her voice. His hands had effortlessly swept the lean lines of her form as she continued, tilting her head to sing softly in his ear. She had fit then, in the spaces between who he was and who he wanted to be. She’d fit in the seams of his life like a yarn tying it all together - past, present, future, wants, wills, and dreams. 

 

-

 

_ But nobody knows you now _ __   
_ When you're dying in LA _ __   
_ And nobody owes you now _ _   
_ __ When you're dying in LA

 

_ - _

 

He has his fingers tangled with hers, stroking lazy circles with his thumb against her pale palm.

 

“It’s time now, they say you had internal bleeding, swelling on the brain, but it’s gone down. It’s safe for you, baby. I’m right here. I…” he pauses, his whispered words subdue against the still quiet of the room. “I can’t do this without you. Not anymore. You’ve carved out so many spots in my days, in my routines. You’re all I have right now.” 

 

The words sink in around them with a physical force when he feels it, the faintest twitch, nearly imperceptible. 

 

But then nothing. 

 

Maybe it was him who’d moved, maybe his hand is finally rebelling against the stillness settled in the room. The machines continue on predictably, the high pitched beep followed closely by a lower one, the digitized sound of the heartbeat he feels faintly thrumming beneath his thumb. But it happens again, a few long moments later and he blows out a breath. 

 

“Betty, baby,” he finds himself cooing against her ear, now standing over her limp form and willing her awake.

 

There’s another twitch against his fingers, the slight flutter of a muscle near her eyelid and he continues coaxing her into consciousness. “Wake up, please, please, please, wake up-”

 

He feels a tear descending his cheek, cresting over the bone and falling down into the dull blonde tangle of curls.

 

And then she blinks. 

 

Her eyes press open, then closed, adjusting to their nearly forgotten state and time stands still. 

 

Three simple words fall from lips as his eyelids flood with tears, his body ridding itself of the worry that had been crippling him for days. 

 

“I love you.”

 

-

 

_ The power, the power, the power _ __   
_ Oh the power, the power, the power _ _   
_ __ Of LA

 

-

 

 

 

_ * _

 

 

end.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo... what'd you think?!
> 
> (i seriously contemplated making this a less than hopeful ending so everyone should thank @jandjsalmon for shaping the ending.)
> 
> Come find me on tumblr @bugggghead!
> 
> Comments ALWAYS appreciated (even though I am notoriously bad at replying, I promise I read each and every one of them over and over again.)


End file.
